Harvey V. Fineberg will become the next Provost of the University, President Neil L. Rudenstine announced last Thursday.

Fineberg, the Dean of the Faculty of Public Health since 1984 and a member of the Harvard community since he enrolled as a freshman at Harvard College in 1963, will assume his new responsibilities on July 1. He will succeed Albert Carnesale who will leave Harvard to become the Chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles. As Provost, Fineberg will be responsible for activities that extend across the University.

"As a scholar, an educator, a policy adviser, and a dean, Harvey Fineberg has developed a strong interest in issues that bridge disciplines, as well as an exceptional capacity for thinking through the dimensions of complex problems," Rudenstine said. "We are very fortunate to have someone as thoughtful, versatile, and effective as Harvey Fineberg to assume the leadership of the Office of Provost."

"My nearly 13 years as Dean of the Faculty of Public Health have been the most gratifying period of my professional life," Fineberg said.

"The public health enterprise has never been more prominent in identifying, understanding, and helping to solve scientific and social problems. I am grateful to the President and to the Corporation for their confidence in appointing me as Harvard's next Provost. I will do my best to assist Neil Rudenstine, whom I admire so much, and the whole Harvard community to make a great university even stronger and better prepared for the future."

While Dean, Fineberg has presided over balanced and rapid growth of the School across a spectrum of disciplines and programs related to public health. Since 1984, the number of SPH degree candidates has grown from 426 to 754; the number of faculty with primary appointments at the School has grown from 133 to 162; and the annual budget has risen from $38 million to more than $120 million. Under Fineberg, the SPH has raised more than $125 million in its capital campaign in just under four years. During his tenure, the SPH has also revamped its flagship degree program -- the Master of Public Health -- by reformulating the program's areas of concentration to meet contemporary health needs, as well as placing greater emphasis on problem-based learning and on the integration of classroom and field experience. Ph.D. degrees are now offered in cooperation with FAS to students in health policy and biological sciences.

Fineberg's relationships with Harvard deans and administrators are deep and broad. Commenting on a friendship that goes back to when they were students at the Kennedy School, Sally Zeckhauser, Vice President for Administration, says, "Harvey represents a remarkable combination -- a warm heart, keen mind, and deft administrative hand. His understanding of the University is profound and it will be a great pleasure and honor to work with him."

Fineberg is known for his affinity for fresh ideas and as a synthesizer of disciplines to produce new insights into a problem. In addition to AIDS and infectious diseases, his research work has been in the areas of decision analysis and technology assessment, fields that marry a variety of disciplines, including statistics and clinical medicine. Mark Rosenberg, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and a friend since they attended Harvard College, says, "His remarkable career has blossomed through many phases: physician, public policy researcher, teacher, dean, and world recognized expert in public health and health care policy. In each phase, he has expanded the conceptual borders of his field and brought creative approaches to world health problems. The underlying secret of his success is his relentless optimism and the incredibly creative and productive force it generates."

Fineberg's commitment to ensuring that the School of Public Health and the University maintain academic excellence is admired by his colleagues. Margaret H. Marshall, associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, and the University's Vice President and General Counsel from 1992 to 1996, comments, "I have observed Harvey working closely with other deans and senior administrators. He has a kind of intellectual efficiency that gets to the heart of the matter, while being very open to listening to people with different views or views that would expand on his. In particular, I have always found him capable of seeing beyond the immediate self-interests of his School to the broader good of the academic community."

Fineberg became a member of the Faculty of Public Health in 1973 and was promoted to full professor in 1982 before being named Dean of the Faculty in 1984 at the age of 38. He served as director of the SPH graduate program in health policy and management from 1975 to 1978, and was also a member of the faculty of the Kennedy School of Government from 1973 to 1981. A 1967 graduate of Harvard College, Fineberg received both an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School in 1972. He was an Intermediate Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows in 1974-75 and went on to receive his Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard in 1980. With colleagues, Fineberg recently completed a review paper on changing public health training needs. He is most recently the co-author of Innovators in Physician Education: The Process and Pattern of Reform in North American Medical Schools (1996). His many previous publications include Clinical Decision Analysis (1980), written with Milton Weinstein and others, and The Epidemic That Never Was: Policy Making in the Swine Flu Scare (1983), written with Richard Neustadt.

Fineberg has served on an array of government panels as well as the boards of numerous health and education organizations. He is currently co-chair of the International Health Board of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. Some of his previous leadership roles include chairing the Committee on Risk Characterization, National Academy of Sciences; the Committee on the Social and Ethical Impacts of Developments in Biomedicine, National Academy of Sciences; and the Committee to Evaluate the Adverse Consequences of Pertussis and Rubella Vaccines, Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences. He is immediate past president of the Association of Schools of Public Health, past president of the Society of Medical Decision Making, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Fineberg lives in Newton with his wife, Mary Wilson, who is chief of infectious diseases at Mount Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, and a member of the Faculties of Medicine and Public Health at Harvard.

Rudenstine said a search for Fineberg's successor as Dean will begin immediately. James Ware, the Frederick Mosteller Professor of Biostatistics and Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of Public Health, has agreed to serve as Acting SPH Dean starting July 1 and continuing through the end of the search.